Monday, April 16, 2012

Apr-01 2012: Why are there no Reports for When the PAS gets out in the Field?

While it seems a bit pointless asking this too.... If it wanted researchers to be able to understand the biases inherent in the records they create, why does the Portable Antiquities Scheme not write reports for each commercial artefact hunting rally they attend? Such a report would set out the various factors which will affect the
information acquired (precise boundaries of area searched, intensity of
activity across different parts of the areas), what is likely to have
been missed (or simply walked-off with without recording), and most
importantly reflecting on the state of what is left of the
archaeological record at that spot when they leave. That's how to allow
researchers using their records as a source of information can learn
what biases may have been introduced by the way the information was
collected in each individual case, and only that will allow them to use
that information in any form of analysis more sophisticated than a
simple and crudely macro-scale presence-absence-here dot-distribution
map.

About Me

British archaeologist living and working in Warsaw, Poland. Since the early 1990s (or even longer) a primary interest has been research on artefact hunting and collecting and the market in portable antiquities in the international context and their effect on the archaeological record.